Busy weekend just past...Tim had a birthday on Sunday and the girls and my brother came along to lunch to help him celebrate the occasion...he was lucky with a fabulous day weather-wise and so he had no excuses regarding the slow cooking of the leg of lamb on the barbecue...always his task...I simply refuse to be shown how to light the barbecue...I believe there are some things...like cleaning the pool and clearing out roof gutters...that a woman simply doesn't always need to add to the task lists!

Chris and I had prepared several simple dishes to go with it, including marinaded chicken wings, spiced prawns, panzanella and lentil salads, fresh bread rolls and a mocha refrigerator cake for dessert. As I am so slow now with all sorts of things, including cooking, I started the preparation on Saturday and had everything well organised, but I think I am a bit over it all now...I find such events so exhausting that I think I am at the stage where I'd prefer to arrange a celebration at a restaurant rather than continue to try and do it at home...and that is something I never thought I'd say!

Our neighbours and Pippa also popped in late in the afternoon to wish him a happy day and stopped to help us eat up some of the leftovers which was kind of them...it was a very scratch meal...but the cheerful chatty company ended the day beautifully.

Tucking in...

Tim was taking his cake cutting responsibilities a bit seriously but Chris got a little excited for him at the thought of chocolate cake...

I made him a simple little gold and white shaker card...the background is an advertisement from a bound volume of the "American Agriculturalist" newspapers from 1876, given to me recently...thanks so much, Ann!

Tim also had lovely long calls from James and Helen, who live in the Batemans Bay area and Simon, Melinda, Nicholas, Wyatt and Spencer who live just south of Wollongong, both in NSW. The call to the smalls was on Skype and very lively and interactive with lots of face pulling and Happy Birthday choruses, we especially enjoyed the one from Spencer...we were also introduced to two new members of their little family, Snowball and Cocoa...

Sweet little buns...they are both reputed to be female...time will tell!

Our eldest, and very handsome, grandster, Nicholas, with Snowball...

Bonnie was keen to sit on the footstool but the girls do not allow them on the furniture...until I found an old rug, then she was happy!

Hollie can be a tad neurotic and morose on occasion, but was a cheerful little soul yesterday...

This week at EIM we have Seagull as our prompt...I kept things quite simple (as I am still too tired to think in depth about anything), with a flying gull illustration, water coloured and gussied up a bit with some Wink of Stella...which you probably cannot see in this photograph but it adds a subtle glistening interest to the white sections of the drawing...We live close to the sea...it is a bit hard to get too far away from it on an island like Tasmania but I am sometimes surprised at how far inland seagulls travel.We have a school close by and seagulls stop by to daily to help students with their lunch box contents, so they are a very common bird here.

The boys have driven out to Karina and Sarah's place to try and deal with the grass in their backyard...they have much more rainfall than us, as they are tucked in under the end of the mountain. They haven't been able to deal with the wet vegetation and it has now become to long for their lawn mower to cope with. Tim's big machine will hopefully chomp through it and allow them to get it back under control.

​A couple of family members are facing surgical interventions this week, barring cancellations, and my thoughts are with them...but good news from my sister who has had her heavy leg cast removed last week following her ankle repair surgery. She received a thumbs up from the surgeon regarding the outcome and I have my fingers crossed that the results will exceed her expectations...that she will have more strength in her ankle and she will be able to be more independent and mobile...making the whole painful intervention worth the effort.

Just for a bit of fun, I videoed our flash new kitchen tap diffuser...a little gift Tim received from his mate Ken recently.The best bit for me is that it diffuses the water flow and makes it much easier to control, but it also has led lights that indicate water temperature...blue for cold, ranging into green for warm and red for hot...flashing red when it reaches maximum temperature...fun hey?

Sounds like very busy times! I too refuse to deal with BBQ (we have charcoal & also a small electric one) or gutters!

Like you we have plenty of seagulls at home as we are only about 25 miles from the sea and there are plenty of lochs around too. Shame that wink of stellar doesn't show but the lights on the diffuser certainly do!

Thank you Sally, When young I used to be very competitive with my three older brothers...there was nothing they could do that I couldn't do better...until I got a little wiser and realised they had just been kidding me all along...proving myself by cleaning their cars better than they could, polishing their shoes better than they could, doing their home tasks better than...oh, you get the jist I'm sure...once I understood their strategies I realised there are plenty of things I don't need to actually demonstrate I can do...understanding the theory can be quite enough, sometimes ;)

Lovely newsy post, I don't do BBQ's either, in fact nor does hubby. The weather has been so bad here that even my son in law hasn't done any, and that's where we go if we want a BBQ. Gutters, most definitely a mans job.
Love the seagull on your inchie.

Thank you Wendy, we have has a very mild and way too dry Winter so far, but we don't usually get the brunt of things until around mid-September, then we usually have real wet windy and cold Winter until Christmas, when suddenly it is hot Summer...so it still may be in the offing...

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cathy

24/8/2017 01:46:50

Looks like your bbq was fun! I hate I missed the chocolate cake, yum. Love the seagull!

Thanks Cathy...the cake was rather good, everyone seemed to enjoy it and there wasn't much let after a few hours. I rarely (almost never) make this sort of dessert, but everyone enjoyed it...it was very easy as I bought everything to make it with and it was all done and in the fridge the evening before...all good!

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Hello, I'm Di...I live in beautiful Tasmania, I enjoy making cards and journals for special folk.